Blog Post Three
Tuesday morning we met with several potential board members for Living Compassion, Zambia. The group included a social worker, a paralegal, a teacher, and two counselors– all sharing a passion for making a difference in Zambia.
Our second meeting of the day was with Martin, a local tailor, who is sewing some prototypes of placemats and shoulder bags as the next Living Compassion products. We will meet with him in a couple of days to see what he has created.
One of the pluses of the guest house where we are staying is that the city center is a 15 minute walk from us. In the afternoon we went in search of local chitenge, the brightly colored traditional Zambian fabric. Along the way we met four young women in grade twelve who quickly became our tour guides. Claudine and Linetty plan to be lawyers while Chico and Joy want to study medicine. These girls are among the very few who could realize these dreams. They currently attend a private school and have family who can afford to continue their schooling. All have their sights on a university education. Joy hopes eventually to study at Cambridge or Stanford (per Cheri’s encouragement).
On our tour we learned that much of the chitenge is imported from Ghana and Congo following the closing of local textile factories. Our guides took us to a shop where we were able to get fabrics made in Kabwe, a nearby city. These are the fabrics that Martin will turn into placemats and bags to bring home as well as turn into a new wardrobe for one of the retreatants whose luggage did not make the trip with us.
The Internet café was closed for repairs so we decided to stop across the street at the Savoy Hotel for a cup of tea while we waited. Imagine our surprise and delight when we turned on our laptops and found ourselves online. It is a high-speed connection, as fast as any we are used to at home! The previous day we had attempted to send photos for the blog—waited 15 minutes for one photo to go out, then gave up when it didn’t, and hoped for more success in the morning. With our accidental find the Internet is once again our friend.
After a late dinner back at our guest house we planned for the next day.
Wednesday morning we met with a local computer technician to explore the possibility of acquiring affordable computers for schools. Right now the computer prices are very high, accessible only to the very wealthy, but he predicts the prices will soon come down. A similar trend happened with cell phones which were very costly only two years ago and are now inexpensive and widely used.
From there we went to Masala Primary School, the school that Living Compassion is “adopting.” Mrs. Mupeta, the school principal, met with us despite having malaria and pneumonia. When we discovered that, we offered to reschedule the meeting, but they assured us that this is just part of life in Zambia. We had a brief tour of the school and were treated to a performance by the school choir. They sang two songs and we thought it was over until one child on her own began to sing “How Could Anyone,” the song that Living Compassion taught the students last year and recorded for CNN.
At the end of our visit we set a meeting for Tuesday of next week to plan the renovation of one of the toilet houses and put in the new water tank.
